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Energy transfer techniques from ultrashort ultraintense laser pulse to plasmas and plasma waves are crucial for many applications, from inertial confinement fusion to particle acceleration. In spite of impressive experimental results obtained in the last decade, there is still a substantial lack of stability and reproducibility of those results in order to provide reliable techniques, allowing e.g. to design laser plasma accelerators. In particular further efforts on plasma characterisation and laser pulse propagation are needed. We report on recent studies on the propagation of a relativistic laser pulse in Helium along a path of 3 mm. The correlation of high quality femtosecond probing interferograms with images and spectra of the pulse after propagation, allows to evidence the decisive role played by the ASE nanosecond pre-pulse and the picosecond pedestal of the CPA main pulse.
Co- authors: Marco GALIMBERTI, Danilo GIULIETTI, Leonida A. GIZZI, Petra KOESTER, Luca LABATE, Paolo TOMASSINI, ILIL-IPCF, CNR, Pisa, Italy Tiberio CECCOTTI, Pascal DE OLIVEIRA, Philippe MARTIN, Pascal MONOT CEA-DSM/DRECAM/SPAM, Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France |